


Promise

by KalendraAshtar



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Angst, F/M, Ficlet, Modern AU, Oneshot, Time-traveling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 20:55:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14089479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KalendraAshtar/pseuds/KalendraAshtar
Summary: Song ficlet for Ben Howard’s Promise.





	Promise

##  **Promise**

_A gift. A curse._

It was meant to be  _both_.

My mother had said as much in her letter, the one she wrote hoping I’d never read.  _“Time is a delicate thing, my darling.”_  She had penned.  _“Don’t use your ability with the ones you love the most, or risk finding them gone in the end, everything changed. They will forget you, even if you’ll still remember every second of what could have been.”_

When I was old enough – the letter dutifully delivered by my uncle on my eighteenth birthday – I realized she didn’t follow her own advice.  _Grief is blinding_  – I would learn that too, at great personal cost.

My father was hit by a runaway car while crossing the road next to our house. It was one of those meaningless accidents, that claim our lives with the surety and brevity of a tired smile. My mother, unhinged by loss and love ( _too much, too deep_ ), went  _back_  to try and prevent it from happening.

I know this because us, the ones kissed – _slapped_ , really – by the gift of bending time, cannot be touched by its alterations. Our lives become forked, and even as we cheerfully go on living in a pathway, we still recall the alternative, the  _before_. We have the sorrow of things lost embedded in the joy of things gained. We live endless lives  _inside our damned minds_.

So I recalled my mother crying, the very life of her streaming down her eyes – and then the scariest part, once she stopped crying and only looked through the window.  _Deciding_.

_“The gift of traveling back in time has been in our family for generations.”_  She wrote, her handwriting fluid and graceful.  _“Only women, woken when they come of age. If you possess it, my dear Claire, you will be faced with some of the toughest choices possible. You will see evil and crave change. You will be tempted to correct every wrong done to you. You will know despair and joy and hope. I pray that you find plenty of happiness, using it as seldom as possible. Help strangers and see the world become better by your touch.”_

She kissed me before she went, pale but decided. Her hair smelt of rosemary, warm hugs and mother.

In this timeline in which I grew up, my mother stopped my father from dying that evening. Instead, they died together the next day – Death waiting for them at the bottom of a ravine, their car overturned by ice and old tires. I lost my father twice, my mother once – I brutally learned you can’t fool time, when it comes for you.

The first time I  _travelled_ , I was nineteen. I stopped a girl from college, a freckled and gentle-eyed brunette, from crossing the park at night and getting assaulted. I remembered all too well the alternative, the shell she would become if I did nothing.  _Only when I didn’t have a choice_  – I only did it when I couldn’t change it in any other way and the outcome would be too dire. I prevented accidents, crimes and a few heartbreaks. But I never used my gift –  _my curse_  – with Jamie.

I never used it to relive our first night together, when I thought I was shattered by happiness, and everybody would see the breaks and the sun pouring out, miles and miles away; I never used it to avoid an argument, even when he walked away and there was the risk that he might never come back to me; I never used it to take back the  _“No”_  I said to him, the first time he asked me to marry him – because I had yet to tell him of my ability and could not deceive him in such a manner. I felt everything my mother wished me to experience – I cherished it all, the good and the bad, the sweet coated with the sour, the life we humans are meant to live as we’re slowly breaking apart.

But time  _robbed me_. And I grieved.

I woke up screaming in the middle of the night, as I so often did those days. Or at least I thought I did, as my mouth was open, every tendon and vessel on my neck tensed into the point of snapping, gasping for air that had vanished. My heart raced towards a destiny forever lost, trying to escape me - the withering host. I rolled in bed, searching with the tips of my fingers. The sheets beside me were empty and cold – that, too, occurred all too often those days. He was gone.

I knew where he was – countless times I had cowardly peeked through the living room’s door, only to see him staring into the flames, bewitched. Like he could see omens there, the crackling of the logs reminiscent of a laughter he would never hear, but loved so dearly. My reaction was always to retreat, to hide away from his pain, because I felt I couldn’t bear it when I already had my own.

I padded to the door and saw him there, his broad naked chest covered by a soft plaid quilt, cream and blue. I could  _wail_  just from the sight of it.

Guilt wrecked me, consuming me bit by bit until there was nothing left. And in that torment I finally found words to speak, a kind of courage that wasn’t bravery at all.

“Jamie.” I rasped out. He startled slightly and looked at me, his blue eyes hooded in the firelight. “What are you doing here?”

“Ye should go back to bed, lass.” He seemed concerned by whatever he saw on my face. “I dinna mean to disturb yer sleep.”

“I will.” I hesitated but at last fully entered the room, watching my shadow dance on the wall. “Jamie,” I gulped, decided to push on. “Do you need me to go?”

“Ye need yer rest, Sassenach.” Jamie smiled a little, but his eyes didn’t catch the light. “Go on and I’ll be with ye presently.”

“No.” I looked away, my voice already trembling. “I mean – do you want me  _gone_?” He straightened his shoulders, his head tilting to absorb my words. “You can’t bear looking at me, can you?”

“Don’t say that!” He snapped, his voice harsher than it would have been, months ago.  _Broken_. “Why would ye say such a thing, Claire?”

“Every other night I wake up and find you gone from my side.” I swallowed hard, moistening my chapped lips. “You spend the night here and I don’t know what to say to you.” My eyes welled up, tears starting to stream down my face. “We barely talk or touch…and I- I…”

Jamie looked at me –  _really looked, like only he_  could – and curled a bit on the armchair he had been sitting on, sighing deeply.  _Resigned._

“It’s my shift.” He said softly, almost inaudibly.

“What?” I blurted, impatiently wiping away tears, as I moved to sit on the couch across from him.

“We agreed that we’d alternate on parent duties at night, so you could rest a little.” He looked away from me, pain enough in his eyes to tear me apart in a clean cut. “It was my night to be with Faith. I know she is…” Jamie closed his eyes, gripping his fists. “ _Gone_. But I couldna leave her alone, ye ken? I thought I’d keep her company, wherever she is.”

“Jamie…” I reached for his hand, entwining his fingers with mine. He was cold as a marble statue, beautiful as one. He examined my fingers and his, as if searching for something that was supposed to be there, hidden inside our joined hands.

“I don’t know what to do with my hands anymore, Claire.” He confessed in a broken voice. “I was supposed to be holding her and I don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not.”

“I could _go_.” I proposed tentatively, nervously rubbing his knuckles with my fingertips. “I could  _travel back_  and save her, Jamie, I know I could… _Our girl_. I could save her. I could bring her back to  _us_.”

“No!” He said with such intensity and fierceness that he almost scared me. His hands –  _big, loving, reassuring_  – came to rest on the sides of my arms.  _Holding me together_. “Ye told me yerself years ago,  _mo ghraidh_. There’s no controlling what could happen – ye might die in childbirth this time around, Claire.  _Ye almost did_. Or ye could go further back than ye intended and we might never find each other. I canna risk losing ye.”

“It would be alright.” I babbled, desperately trying to convince him – to convince  _myself_ – that I could, indeed, take away the terror that had been offered to us, such a cruel replacement for the joy we had been promised.  _Faith_ , our stillborn daughter. The only reason I truly wished to go back in time and  _could not_.

“Ye are  _my life_ , Claire.” Jamie said ardently, sliding from the chair to kneel in front of me. “I grieve because the loss is so great. Aye, my heart is tormented and sometimes I canna sleep – I dread dreaming of her, our bonny lass,  _redheaded_  and _whole_ and  _alive._  Those are the dreams I fear the most, because I’ll never see her so.” He bent his head, his forehead pressing against my knuckles. “You asked me if I couldna bear looking at you –,” I felt his tears against my skin, fresh and tingling. “That is the only thing  _I can_  bear. Ye give me hope, Sassenach – even when it’s just a wee flame, barely there. I wouldna risk ye,  _ever_.”

I was sobbing in earnest by then, all things so clumsily contained finally finding a crack to escape control.  _Guilt. Sorrow_. Love, for them  _both_.

“Why should I have this – this  _thing_ ,” I almost spat, as he held me in his arms and rocked me back and forth, attempting to comfort me. “If I can’t even save my own daughter?”

“Ye are meant to save lives, Sassenach.” He assured me, his voice husky, his hands gentle on my back and cheek. “Just not that one.  _Not that one_. We are meant to live and lose, Claire. And know it was worth it.”

We stood there, spilling our sorrow into each other for what seemed like hours, finding relief in being so earnest, so raw.

“Promise me ye won’t go,  _mo ghraidh_.” Jamie eventually pleaded, his lips brushing my hair again and again. “For there is an entire life ahead that only has meaning with ye in it. _I love ye_.”

“Yes.” I whispered, as he slowly carried me in his arms towards our bedroom. “Promise me we’ll talk of her whenever we need to. That you will wake me up to come and watch over her with you. And when you don’t know what to do with your hands – perhaps… you could hold me?”

“Aye.” He kissed my lips, soft and tender.

We laid down, facing each other, our eyes refusing to let go – we wouldn’t risk drifting away that night, parted even by sleep. And in his eyes I saw the first light of dawn, balmy and golden and pure, seeming to have come earlier than all the nights before, when darkness lingered in the curtains of our bedroom.

And _we promised._


End file.
